Tag - seva

Yoga studios can still register to participate in global event to preserve and restore eyesight

Seva’s Fifth Annual Yoga for Sight event will take place throughout the month of April 2018. Registration is still open for yoga studios and instructors around the world to participate. The event raises awareness and support for Seva’s international efforts to preserve and restore sight and provide eye care services in underserved communities.

Yoga studios that engage with Yoga for Sight offer classes or other activities that in some way encourage participants to reflect upon the sense of sight, with the goal of raising funds to support Seva’s sight-saving programs in more than 20 countries around the world. Every $50 raised through Yoga for Sight will restore the sight of a person in need.

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Some studios offer classes in the dark or invite participants to wear blindfolds for the duration of the practice. Others offer a special meditation practice or show a film that profiles Seva’s work around the world to protect and restore eyesight in communities with limited access to medical care.

Funds raised through Yoga for Sight provide eye exams, eyeglasses, medical care and sight restoring surgery to adults and children living in impoverished communities in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tanzania, Nepal and Guatemala, as well as in Native American communities here in the United States. This past year Seva provided vital eye care services to 1,290,167 people in 21 countries. Nearly 70,000 had their eyesight restored, 118,498 received medical treatments and 105,815 were given glasses.

Around the world, 36 million people are blind, and another 217 million suffer from low vision. The World Health Organization estimates that 75 percent of this blindness and low-vision could be prevented or cured.

Studios big and small take part all over the United States and around the world. Through classes and events, participants get a chance to experience the personal fulfillment of practicing compassion in action. This year, studios from Alabama to New York and even all the way to Portugal have signed up to participate in Yoga for Sight.

“We tend to take for granted the things that are always there for us, and sight is one of those things,” said Grace Edmunds, Yoga Instructor in Berkeley, CA. “Through yoga and through the practice of compassion and empathy, we can open up to seeing people’s struggles and understanding them. That’s why it ties in so well: yoga and Yoga for Sight. I feel incredibly excited to be a participant in Yoga for Sight.”